Wednesday, February 10, 2016

New York Citizens Budget Commision (CBC) Report Recommends Targeted Approach to New York City Organic Waste Diversion

The Citizens Budget Commission today released a report
that analyzes the potential cost to New York City taxpayers of
diverting food scraps and other organic material from landfills as part
of the City's environmental agenda. The City has initiated a residential
organic waste collection pilot and recently adopted a mandate on large
commercial producers of food waste. By 2018 the City aims to have a
citywide residential program, and the commercial mandate could be
expanded as greater processing capacity becomes available.

The report - titled "Can We Have Our Cake and Compost it Too? An Analysis of Food Waste Diversion in New York City"
- finds an expansion of the City's organics programs would impose
substantial logistical and financial burdens. If residential curbside
organics collection was expanded citywide, the program would add new
costs ranging from $177 million to $251 million annually, because at
least 88,000 new truck-shifts by the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY)
would be needed, adding traffic and contributing to local air
pollution. Moreover, if residential or commercial organic waste
diversion were to expand significantly, accessing processing capacity
close to the city would be a challenge, at least in the short run.

Given
these hurdles, an alternative technology for food waste diversion
-in-sink food waste disposers- should also be examined as part of the
City's organics diversion strategy. This underutilized technology could
divert a significant amount of food waste from landfills to some of the
City's wastewater treatment plant digesters without adding new trucks to
the road.

Until
the City can address the high cost of residential garbage collection
and secure adequate organics processing capacity, it should devise a
more limited strategy. DSNY and the Department of Environmental
Protection (DEP) should collaborate on approaches that could achieve
meaningful environmental benefits without adding new costs. Two
possibilities are:

Expand
curbside collections only where and when additional collection routes
are not required. If participation levels are high enough, DSNY could
expand the organics program while avoiding additional collection routes.
This could be achieved by either replacing a weekly refuse pickup with
an organics pickup or collecting refuse and organics simultaneously with
special trucks with two separate compartments. An analysis of the
city's 59 sanitation districts finds such collection efficiencies are
possible in 1 district at current organics set-out rates, and 10
districts if organics set-out rates match neighborhood recycling rates.
Achieving such efficiencies would require City Council approval and a
significant boost to participation rates.

Consider
encouraging use of in-sink disposers in select neighborhoods with
adequate wastewater treatment plant infrastructure and capacity to
reduce garbage collection. DEP and DSNY should collaborate to identify
neighborhoods where in-sink disposers could be used without burdening
existing wastewater treatment infrastructure and where trash collections
could be reduced. DEP operates in a more constrained regulatory
environment than DSNY so a joint effort is critical to developing a
technically feasible strategy. The distribution of costs for the
purchase, installation, and operation of the devices between the City,
building owners, and residents would also need to be resolved.

This analysis finds two sanitation districts in the Bronx and two in Brooklyn in areas served by adequate wastewater treatment infrastructure could reduce trash pickup if 50 percent of residential food waste went down the sink. Implementing this strategy in these four districts would reduce truck traffic and pollution while diverting more than 17,000 tons of food waste and saving $4 million annually.

CBC has highlighted the high cost—more than $1.7 billion annually—of residential municipal trash collection and disposal in New York City compared to that of other municipalities. In addition to the high fiscal costs, negative environmental impacts exist from the transportation of waste to distant landfills and from the landfills themselves.

...

The City’s One New York plan set ambitious goals to reduce total waste disposed 90 percent by 2030 and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. To achieve these goals, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposes expanding residential organic recycling to all residents by 2018.

The City Council also passed a law, effective in 2016, requiring large commercial producers of food waste to divert organic waste.

...

The City of New York has two separate systems for handling solid waste. The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) collects 3.8 million tons of residential and government agency waste each year, while more than 250 private haulers pick up 4.0 million tons of business waste.

In total these two systems cost taxpayers and businesses $2.4 billion per year: $1.7 billion for DSNY and $730 million for private haulers. New York City residents separate trash into three waste streams: 1) recyclable paper and cardboard; 2) recyclable metal, glass, and plastic; and 3) everything else, referred to as “refuse.” DSNY workers collect the two recycling streams once per week, either in separate trucks or in trucks with two compartments (“dual-bin”), and refuse is collected two or three times weekly. Almost 90 percent of refuse and nearly all recycling are collected at the curb with two-worker garbage trucks.

In fiscal year 2014 DSNY spent $1.3 billion on refuse—$826 million for collection and $432 million for disposal—and $411 million on recycling, mostly for collection.

Due to fuller trucks and denser material, refuse costs $422 on a per-ton basis, versus $721 per ton for recycling. Recyclable material is delivered to local processing plants. In contrast, more than 80 percent of refuse is brought to transfer stations to be loaded onto tractor trailer trucks, railcars, or barges for transport to landfills in other states.

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